Jonathan Ive

- I remember the first time I saw an Apple product.I remember it so clearlybecause it was the first time I realized,when I saw this product,I got a very clear sense of the peoplethat designed it and made it.A big definition of who you are as a designer it's,it's the way you look at the world.And,I guess it's one of the sort of curses of what you dois that you're constantly looking at sometingand thinking why, why is it like that?Why is it like that and not like this?And so in that sense you'reconstantly designing.

When we're designing a productwe have to look to different attributes of the product.And some of those attributes will bematerials that its made from.And the form that's connected to those materials.So of example with the first iMac that we made,the primary component of that was the (mumbles)which was very cool.We would have an entirely different approachto designing something like thatthan the current iMac,which is a very thin flat panel display.Other issues would be you know,just physically how you connect to the products.

So for example, something like the iPhone.Everything differs to the display.A lot of what we seem to be doing in a product like thatis actually getting design out of the way.And I think when forms developwith that sort of reasonand they're not just arbitrary shapes,it feels almost inevitable.It feels almost undesigned.It feels almost like well, of course it's that way.Why wouldn't it be any other way.

This is the vessel for the iMac.When we removed this, the aluminumfor the display and the center here,we actually take that material and then we canmake two keyboard frames from it.These are literally just a couple of the stagesof how you make the MacBook Air.Rough cutting, this is for the (mumbles).And there is a remarkable efficiency and beautyto just how much a single part can do.

And I think that's one of the things that wepush and push ourselves onis trying to figure out well can we dothe job of those six parts with just one?This part is actually stars off as this extrusion.So this is an aluminum extrusionthat goes through multiple operations.Most of them, CNC machine operationsto end up,to end up with this part.

And so you can see, I mean, just a dramaticsort of transformation between this raw blankand the final part.But what we end up withis a part that's got all of the mounting features.So all the buses, they're all,this is just one part.But this one part is providingso much functionality.And this one part really does,does enable this product.So you're,you know, so much of the effort behinda product like the MacBook Air wasexperimenting with different processes.

There's a, completely non obvious but,the way that you hold, you know,to get from this part to this part,they're incredibly complex series of fixturesto hold this part in the different machine stages.And we end up spending a lot of time designing fixtures.The design of this in many wayswasn't the design of a physical thing.It was figuring out process.

It's really important in a product to have a senseof the hierarchy of what's importantand what's not importantby removing those things that areall buying for your attention.An indicator has a value when it's indicating something.But if it's not indicating something,it shouldn't be there.It's one of those funny things,you spend so much more timeto make it less conspicuous and less obvious.And if you think about it,so many of the products that we're surrounded by,they want you to be very aware of justhow clever the solution was.

When the indicator comes on,I wouldn't expect anybody to point to that as a feature.But at some level, I think you're aware ofa calm and considered solutionthattherefore speaks about how you're going to use it,not the terrible struggles thatwe as designers and engineers hadin trying to solve some of the problems.That's quite obsessive isn't it (laughs)

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Released

7/18/2014

On an average day, each of us uses hundreds of objects. (Don't believe it? Start counting: alarm clock, light switch, faucet, shampoo bottle, toothbrush, razor…) But who makes all these things, and why do they look and feel the way they do? How can good design make objects, and our lives, better?

Objectified is a documentary about industrial design; it's about the manufactured objects we surround ourselves with, and the people who make them. Gary Hustwit, the director of Helvetica, talks with Dieter Rams, Marc Newson, Jonathan Ive, and other renowned designers behind some of the world's most iconic products. lynda.com is proud to offer this film to our members, along with over one hour of online-exclusive bonus movies.